Whirl-a-way, the Passing Gear

In the early 50’s, every school morning was chaos getting ready to run for the 7:30 AM ferry.  Molly and I had just started school in Seattle, she to Holy Rosary and me to Seattle Prep.  My job was to start Dad’s 49 Oldsmobile Super 88 with the rocket V-8 engine to warm it up for the mad dash to the ferry.  We had 15 minutes for the run to the dock and Dad drove both sides of the road thru the S-curves at the top of the Heights hill.  He  could see thru the S-curves and wasn’t scaring us on purpose.  When questioned about his maneuver, he responded that he was just straightening out the curves.  Most of the time, Dad’s mad rush to catch the ferry was successful.

One day, we hit the dock and the gate was shut.  If I didn’t make it to school on time, it was downstairs to the boiler room for 3 spats.  The principal delivered the spats while you grabbed your ankles and waited for the awful “smack” that would lift your heels off the floor.  Some kids cried; which was kid’s stuff.

Ducking under the gate, I ran for the end of the slip with the ticket taker yelling at me to stop.  The ferry deck was below me and 5 feet from the slip when I jumped.  No spats for me that day.  Sister Molly was “lucky”, as the nuns didn’t give spats.  It was a girl’s school.

Coming home from school, Dad was always racing to make the ferry and Molly and I were on a mission.  Before radar, patrol cars would cruise Fauntleroy avenue looking for speeding commuters running for the ferry.  They would hide up side streets or park between two cars and Molly and I would kneel on the back seat and try to spot them out the rear window and warn Dad.

There was a special button under the accelerator pedal of the Rocket V-8 engine that dropped the transmission to a lower gear and caused the car to surge forward to a much higher rate of speed.  GM called it a passing gear and they gave it the name of the famous race horse, Whirlaway.  The Super 88 was the first “muscle car” and Dad would use the gear in a tight situation to stay safe, snapping our heads back in the backseat.

 At the time, he worked for the Plumbers Union selling memberships and made $600 a month, good money in the early 50’s.  He drove across the state, staying in the tail wind of a bus on the long straight stretches to save gas.

One summer, he and Mom took us three kids with them to a plumber’s convention in Yakima where there was going to be a movie star we had never heard of, Judy Canova.  It was steep and windy coming down the Ellensburg canyon and I saw an old man walking and limping along the canyon wall.  “Oh, look at that poor old limping man”, I said.  Dad’s reply was:  “He’s a side-hill-gouger”.  “He’s been walking these hills so long that his leg is shorter on one side”.  I guess we believed him.

The plumbers introduced Judy Canova in the outdoor arena.  I had never seen a real movie star and after her song; I ran down to the field to ask for her autograph, my program in hand.  “What shall I write on”, she asked?  “Write on my back”, I replied.  I turned around and she signed my program.  Her autograph has been lost to history.

 “Ice cream, we scream, we all scream for ice cream”, we shouted as the car came in sight of the Dairy Queen.  Sometimes our chanting worked.

We had another game, guessing where we were.  Dad would tell us kids to duck down in the back seat and close our eyes.  If one of us peeked, the game was over.  He would then drive to a different place on the island, sometimes weaving on a straight stretch to confuse us as to our whereabouts.  When he finally stopped, without peeking, each of us three kids would guess where we we were, which was the end of the game.

Seventy years ago, it was called the Burma Road, probably named by a GI who had to navigate some impassable roads in Burma.  It was steep, narrow, and wound itself in and out of the canyons, skirting the Colvos Passage.  

Mom was our den mother and the 49 Olds was packed to the gunwales with cub scouts she was taking home.  Some lived down the Burma Road.  The gravel road had just been graded; the grader having pushed soft dirt over the edge above the canyon, causing the top to appear solid, when it wasn’t.  Mom pulled over to the edge of the road and ordered brother Mike out of the car for “cutting-up” in the back seat.  She started the car, but the soft dirt caught the front wheel and sent the Olds 88 over the edge to roll on its side against a tree about 20 feet below the road.  Mike ran down the hill and climbed up the side of the car to help Mom and the cub scouts out of the car.  Nobody was hurt; but the car was ruined.  Dad had it fixed, but the heater leaked and the frame was bent so it looked like it was going down the road sideways.